Chattanoogans may one day glance up at the gigantic Martin Luther King Jr. mural being painted on the six-story AT&T Building downtown and see the face of a relative, friend or sweetheart there – 10 feet high.
Artist Meg Saligman, her three-person crew and seven local apprentices are photographing willing people on the streets of Chattanooga and painting them into the 40,000-square-foot mural that will cover the side of the formerly beige block building.
“No, so far no one has refused because they’re having a bad hair day,” says Public Art Chattanooga program assistant Ana May. “Meg is a rock star in her field, and this is the largest mural she has ever done.”
Today, July 16, Chattanoogans can help paint a portion of the mural in the Chattanooga Public Library downtown. For this part of the project, a portion of the mural is sketched onto a special fabric that will be sealed onto the building as part of the complete mural. The design on the fabric is color-coded, somewhat like a paint-by-numbers kit, so volunteers will know exactly what color to paint in which spot.
“We’re offering the opportunity for Chattanoogans to paint a portion of the mural this way in places all over the city,” May says. “In the last event, the design sketched on the fabric was just the top of a little boy’s head, so all the colors were shades of brown.”